Fortune is a Woman (33 page)

"You should open a restaurant," her boarders told her admiringly, patting their growing stomachs happily. But Annie didn't want just a restaurant. After four years she had outgrown Aysgarth's and her boarders—she had learned how to run an establishment catering for twenty and now she was ready to take on two hundred. She wanted to open her own hotel.

"With the same standards and the same cooking, though of course I won't be doing it all myself," she told Francie over a breakfast cup of coffee. "But I'm ready to take on the challenge."

Francie's blond head was bent over the
Examiner
and Annie gazed fondly at her. She had thought Francie a lovely girl when she met her, but now she was a beautiful young woman. Her long blond hair waved softly around her face, her candid blue eyes were startlingly dark and long-lashed, and her skin was smooth and creamy. And she was no longer the frail waiflike creature Annie had first known, her body had new curves and she held herself tall and walked with a proud, effortless grace. Annie thought with a pang that Francie was still only twenty-three, she was so young and so lovely. Men looked admiringly at her, she should be able to have her pick of any of them, but she just wasn't interested. She gave all her love to her son, Ollie.

The kitchen door opened as if on cue and the little tow-haired four-year-old ran in and climbed on Annie's lap. "Annie," he said, smiling cajolingly at her, wrapping his wiry little arms around her neck, "can I have a cookie?" His sweet gray eyes beamed into hers and he looked so like Josh that her heart turned over, but she didn't give in. She said, "It's
'may I,'
not
'can I.'
And anyway, no, you may not. You
may
have an apple instead."

He sighed and pressed himself closer. "Why are you so difficult, Annie?" he complained. "All I want is a cookie."

"You'll have one at teatime with your milk," she promised, smiling fondly at him. "And one day, when you are a man, you'll look into the mirror and see what fine strong teeth you've got, and you'll thank your aunt Annie for not plying you with cookies every time you asked."

Ollie sighed; he knew when he was beaten. Annie looked back at Francie—her head was still bent over the newspaper and she was oblivious to her son's presence. Annie's brows rose in surprise. Francie usually focused all her attention on Ollie, but this morning her thoughts were a million miles away.

"I bet you didn't hear a word I said," she exclaimed loudly. "Your head's been stuck in that newspaper for ages. Whatever's in there that's so fascinating?" Francie looked frightened as she passed the newspaper wordlessly to Annie.

The photographs of the Harrison party covered two pages, with another page detailing the scintillating guest list, the fabulous flower decorations, the expensive champagne, the delicious food served from golden platters by the burgundy-liveried footmen in white gloves, and the amazing rebirth of the Harrison mansion. PHOENIX HOUSE said the headline over a full-page picture of the mansion. Its portals were flung wide and Harry, in white tie and tails, was greeting his guests.
"A San Francisco landmark is reinstated with the year's most magnificent party..."

Annie glanced quickly at Francie. She took her hand across the table. "That's where you went last night, wasn't it?" she said compassionately. "You just couldn't keep away."

Francie nodded. "It's worse than that," she said. "I saw Harry."

"Well, Harry's back in town and even though you don't frequent the same places, it's still a small world. Sooner or later you'd have bumped into him anyway, walking down the street or at a corner newspaper stand or in a store."

"Annie, you don't understand.
He saw me. Our eyes met."

"Maybe he didn't recognize you. After all, it's been years—"

"Oh, he recognized me all right. And if he didn't, then this will confirm it." Francie pointed to her own face in the photograph of the crowd outside the Harrison mansion.

"There's no mistaking it's you, all right," Annie admitted less confidently. "But I still don't know why you are so afraid, Francie. Things have changed. You're a grown woman, not an underage girl. There's nothing Harry can do to you now."

Francie shook her head miserably. She had been telling herself the same thing all night, but she still didn't believe it. "I know Harry. He never stood up for me against my father, he always felt superior, the great son and heir of the great Harmon Harrison. All Harry ever wanted to be was an exact replica of his father and believe me, he is— right down to the last drop of hatred. Harry has money and he has power and he'll use them against me any way he can."

Annie stared at her wide-eyed. "Then what will you do?" she asked, suddenly afraid for her.

Ollie climbed from Annie's lap and ran to Francie as she stood up, anxiously clutching her skirt. "Where are you going?" he asked.

She stroked back his hair, managing a smile. "I'm going to see Lai Tsin," she told him.

Lai Tsin's office was at the back of his big warehouse near the waterfront and it was as sparse and neat as the man himself. The walls were lined with shelves of reference books and catalogues; details of monthly tides and sailings were pinned to the notice board and a map of the world was marked with the routes of his current cargoes. A huge iron walk-in safe, to which only he had the key, housed ledgers with details of every transaction he had ever made, the accounts showing his net worth, and a considerable amount of cash, as well as the worn wooden treasure pillow containing a small silken black braid of hair and a faded sepia photo of a young girl holding a fan.

Lai Tsin sat behind a big wooden desk, his fingers flying over his old wooden abacus as he checked long columns of figures. Besides the straight-backed wooden chair on which he was sitting the room contained one other chair, a small stove that he rarely lit because he never felt the cold and a narrow blackwood altar table with two beautiful nephrite jade statues, one of Kwan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and one of the goddess of good fortune.

In the cavernous depths of the gloomy warehouse itself were stored hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of goods of every sort: silks, laquerware, paintings, rugs, and antiquities from many parts of Asia, as well as more mundane household goods. A second warehouse contained only enormous wooden chests of tea of every sort and flavor. Lai Tsin had taken the money the Elders had lent him and multiplied it a thousandfold, though no one would ever know it because the company did not trade under his name. It was Francie who was owner of the "L. T. Francis Company," but it was Lai Tsin who did the work. It was he who, when he had stopped off at Hawaii on the way back from the Orient, had picked up a bankrupt pineapple plantation for a song and by putting in his own canning factory had turned it into a profitable concern. It was he who had bought the ships' chandlers on the San Francisco waterfront and made it the biggest and the best in the port. It was he who had invested in a rope works in Shanghai and a carpet manufacturer in Hong Kong, in silkworm farms in China and in sheep with the best wool in Australia. It was Lai Tsin who had canvassed the merchants of San Francisco and Los Angeles and Seattle and persuaded them to let him act as their agent, and he who had organized the bigger freightloads that made it possible to cut costs, and he who employed agents to scout for the antiquities and treasures coveted by the Westerners. Lai Tsin had cornered the tea market by importing delicate flavors specially blended for Western tastes. In the eyes of his Chinese contemporaries Lai Tsin was a success, his business had grown by leaps and bounds, he was rich. But for him it was not enough; he had reached a plateau and he knew it was time to move on.

There was a knock on the door and he looked up as Francie walked in. He smiled and said, "You are just the person I need to see." But then he saw her eyes and knew something had happened. He walked over to her and offered her a chair. "Are you cold?" he said anxiously. "I will light the stove."

Francie shook her head. She couldn't wait to unburden herself and the whole story about Harry spilled out, about how she had gone to the house and seen him and now he knew she was still alive, and how afraid she was that he would come looking for her.

Lai Tsin was very quiet for a long while after she finished speaking. If anyone had an answer to her problem she knew it was him, and she waited anxiously for him to speak.

"Harry will see the photograph and he will search for you," he said at last. "You are not yet strong enough to confront him. You must leave San Francisco for a while until he tires of the search and forgets you again."

"I'll go back to the ranch," Francie said eagerly. "Ollie loves it there—"

He shook his head. "There is always a chance he will remember the ranch and go there. No, Francie. You must go far away from here, far from California. You must go to China."

CHAPTER 25

Harry threw the detective's typewritten report impatiently into his desk. He paced to the window and stared angrily out onto California Street. The fool had been unable to find Francie, but Harry knew she was out there somewhere, he felt it in his bones.

He turned away restlessly. He was irritated and upset; he was supposed to return to Princeton for the spring semester, but he sure as hell didn't feel like it. He was sick of college, sick of San Francisco, sick of thinking about his goddamn sister. He needed a change. He needed wine, women, and song. His spirits lifted as he contemplated the idea, and his mind instantly made up, he raced up the stairs and ordered his valet to pack. They were going to Paris.

He called up Buck Wingate and invited him to accompany him, then he reserved the two best suites on the next liner leaving for France and ordered his private railroad coach to be attached to the Southern Pacific to New York.

Buck Wingate was three years older than Harry. He had graduated from Princeton and was working in his father's Sacramento law practice, gaining experience before continuing his graduate studies in law at Harvard, and immediately after that he meant to enter politics. He was twenty-three years old and had been voted the best-looking man of his year at college. He was tall with dark, wavy hair that grew in a peak on his forehead, steady brown eyes, and a lean athletic body. He swam, rowed crew, played a nine average at polo, and had a golf handicap of seven. But his passion was his forty-foot gaff-rigged sloop, the
Betsy Bee,
which he sailed as often as possible off Newport, where the family had a summer home.

He wasn't sure the trip to Paris with Harry Harrison was exactly his style, but his father insisted he go along "to keep an eye on him." Jason Wingate had always taken care of Harmon Harrison's legal business and after his tragic death in the earthquake he had continued to keep a fatherly eye on the boy. And not without a bit of aggravation to Buck. He'd had to rescue young Harry from the authorities more than once. His latest scrape was when he'd been caught in a police raid on a notorious New York bordello. "He's just sowing a few wild oats," Buck had told the police, but Jason was worried because Harry wasn't paying too much attention to his studies either and his grades were slipping.

"I'd better take a sabbatical from Princeton, Mr. Wingate," Harry told him. "I need time to get over my father's death and sort myself out."

Buck had raised his eyebrows—it was five years since Harmon had died and he hadn't noticed Harry still grieving. But he said nothing. And now he dutifully packed and joined Harry on board the
Normandie.

When he looked back on the trip later he knew his instinct had been right, it wasn't his style. Harry Harrison was an arrogant young pup with an embarrassing habit of treating servants like serfs and of throwing money about as though it was going out of style. Buck had been to Europe several times and there were places and things he wanted to see again: Palladio's villas in Italy; Venice by moonlight when the piazzas were silent and empty and he felt he had stepped back centuries in time; the castles on the Rhine and the mountains in Bavaria; the ageless beauty of Paris with the Seine and its romantic bridges and the Louvre full of masterpieces; and the timelessness of London's arcades and squares. There was so much to absorb from Europe, so much to see, to feel. But all Harry wanted to do was party.

Harry insisted they stay at all the grandest hotels. He slept all day and refused to see any of Europe's beauty, except its women. He ate at all the smartest restaurants, drank the oldest wines and the best champagne, and patronized the fanciest brothels.

He bought half a dozen automobiles, a Rolls-Royce, a Bugatti, a Hispano Suiza, a Benz, a de Dion Bouton, and a de Courmont. He had them all specially refinished in the exact color of the Harrison burgundy livery and fitted out in ebonywood and silver. He bought a two-hundred-foot yacht from a tea magnate in England, ordered it to be refurbished from stem to stern and staffed it with a permanent crew of forty. He sent diamond bracelets to women he fancied and sable coats with emerald buttons to those whose favors pleased him.

Buck was no prude, but he watched tight-lipped. Harry's wild oats were on a princely scale, but whenever Buck protested, he just laughed and said he could afford it. And few people, except Buck, knew about his drinking and his taste for opium. Harry was clever enough to keep that to himself. He would just disappear for a night every so often, but he always emerged again the following afternoon, freshly showered and shaved, immaculately dressed and clear-eyed. Whatever he did, it surely didn't show on his face.

The Wingates had had money for three generations, as long as the Harrisons. They owned a fine home in San Francisco, an apartment in New York, and a summer "cottage" in Newport for the sailing. They lived well, but Buck had never seen anyone spend money or pursue drink and women the way Harry did. After a few weeks he had had enough. He cabled his father that he was returning and left Harry to his expensive pastimes.

Left alone, Harry marched angrily into the Ritz bar and at once took up with a crowd of young Englishmen, who were over for a boisterous weekend in Paris. He was bored without Buck's company and tired of the same faces, and when the Honorable Morgan Tilmarsh invited him to visit he accepted with alacrity.